Rare Plant Rescue

Photo credit: A. Enns

Rare Plant Rescue (RPR) is a voluntary stewardship program for landowners with rare plants or rare plant habitat.

Launched by Nature Saskatchewan in 2002, RPR aims to conserve rare plant habitat by building strong, respectful relationships with landowners and providing them with the information they need to make informed stewardship decisions. It is modeled after Nature Saskatchewan's successful Operation Burrowing Owl program.

Rural landowners with habitat supporting endangered and threatened plant species are informed of this natural heritage and invited to sign a voluntary stewardship agreement. RPR staff conduct rare plant surveys on participants’ land, and return periodically to monitor the status of any plant species at risk occurrences that are found.

As of 2017, 82 private landowners participate in RPR, and together are conserving over 104,000 acres (42,087 hectares) of valuable rare plant habitat while they continue to use their land as they always have.

“Taking part in the Stewards of Saskatchewan and the Rare Plant Rescue program has helped us to realize that we can still play an important conservation role, although we are but a very small part of the big picture of Nature in the province of Saskatchewan.”

Rare Plant Rescue is focusing on the following nine species protected both provincially and federally as threatened, endangered or extirpated (no longer found in Saskatchewan, but still present in other places.)

Are you a Saskatchewan rancher with rare plants on your land? Are you interested in having a Beneficial Management Plan done up for your farm by a professional agrologist, and access to dollar-for-dollar funding to implement management actions (e.g. invasive species control) that are beneficial for your ranching operation and the rare plants on your land? And the best part…..it is completely FREE!!!

If so, check out Rare Plants and Ranchers, our exciting new joint program with the Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan!

For more resources, including the Pocket Guide to the Rare Plants of Southern Saskatchewan, click here to visit our resources page.

For more information on the benefits of stewardship, please visit our Stewards of Saskatchewan Page.